Lawmakers Criticize Settlement On Hubble

Lawmakers Criticize Hubble Settlement, Investigation

November 17, 1993|By MICHAEL REMEZ; Courant Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The $25 million settlement between the federal government and the makers of the flawed main mirror for the Hubble Space Telescope did not go over well before a congressional subcommittee Tuesday.

Lawmakers criticized the settlement reached last month with two Connecticut corporations, noting that the actual repairs to the telescope's mirrors will cost at least $87 million.

"A $25 million settlement does not seem to make up for that if it is going to cost between $80 [million] and $100 million to correct the mistake," said U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Several committee members also criticized the investigation by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into the making of the troubled $1.5 billion telescope.

In the settlement, Norwalk-based Perkin-Elmer Corp. agreed to make a $15 million cash payment. Hughes Danbury Optical Systems Inc. agreed to forfeit $3.5 million in fees that are outstanding on the original Hubble contract and to refund the government $6.5 million in payments for work being done under continuing Hubble contracts.

The agreement meant the government would not go ahead with a threatened lawsuit against the companies over their responsibility for making the main mirror in the telescope, which was ground to the wrong shape by a computer-controlled polisher.

Repairs to the telescope are scheduled to be made in December during the most ambitious space shuttle mission ever attempted.

Edward A. Frankle, general counsel for NASA, defended the settlement, saying NASA risked getting no payment and paying extensive legal fees if it took the companies to court.

"By settling for the $25 million, we established to our satisfaction that the contractor was at fault, we recovered a significant portion of the cost incurred as a result of the mirror defect, we divested the contractor of its profit, and we avoided

the expense and disruption that a complex and lengthy litigation would have caused," Frankle said.

Reached after the hearing, a spokesman for Hughes Aircraft -- which bought Perkin-Elmer's optical division in 1989 -- characterized the settlement as fair.

Richard Dore, speaking from Hughes headquarters in California, said previous investigations also have placed part of the blame for the Hubble troubles on NASA, which makes it logical to share the costs of repair. He added that Hughes took control of the optical company after the mirror was made.

Still, William D. Colvin, inspector general for NASA, said the agency's investigation showed evidence of the errors existed throughout the manufacturing process.

"Yet it appears no serious attempt was made to resolve the source of these errors," Colvin told committee members.

The 8-foot telescope mirror was manufactured by Perkin-Elmer in Wilton and Danbury in 1980 and 1981, but the flaw was not discovered until the telescope was placed in orbit around the Earth in 1990.

Although the Hubble has been able to do much valuable science, its inability to focus light from distant faint sources prevents it from doing much of the research that only a telescope in space could do.

Colvin's investigation found indications but no proof that workers at Perkin-Elmer also had detected something was wrong and didn't take corrective action.

For example, certain critical data seemed to be left out of written monthly reports on the project, the company refused to request assistance from key design people and engineers failed to heed the advice of a Perkin-Elmer advisory board.

Colvin also reported that one piece of evidence -- a special photograph of the mirror's shape known as a interferogram -- appeared to have been cropped for a government report in a way that masked the error.

Neither Colvin nor a member of his team, Debbie Miller, could tell committee members who might have done that or why.

Rohrabacher pressed the investigators for an opinion on whether the document was intentionally altered to avoid NASA's detection of problems.

He didn't get an answer.

"There is $62 million in federal money wasted, and you don't have an opinion?" Rohrabacher asked the witnesses.

U.S. Rep. John S. Tanner, D-Tenn., criticized the reports presented to the committee, saying they fail to pin blame on individuals who could be responsible.

"If you pass it around enough, then nobody is responsible," Tanner said. "If nobody is responsible, you can never get to the bottom of any of this.